On Enthusiastically Appreciating the Little Things
Elyse Chambers
is a writer based in Napa
I went to an Enneagram party recently — it is exactly as New Age-y as it sounds — and discovered that I’m a tie between two types: 7 and 3, or an Enthusiast and an Achiever. I like the sound of it, the implication that I strive enthusiastically. The person leading the group, Elizabeth, is an Enneagram specialist and she helped break down all nine types. A dozen women sat close together on a handful of couches and chairs, trays of hard cheeses and charcuterie and sliced cucumbers on the table between us, nodding furiously as Elizabeth laid bare all of our operating systems. Yes! We said again and again as she talked about the Peacemaker and the Individualist and the Challenger. It’s essentially an intensive personality test and, as someone who loved filling in the little boxes to reveal core truths about myself in the back of Seventeen Magazine (Does he like you? What kind of flirt are you?), I was all in.
When it was time to talk about Type 7’s, Elizabeth said one of our flaws is that we’re always thinking ahead, living for the future. And all of that forward thinking means we’re not experiencing the present.
I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s true for me. I take deep pleasure in the present moment. I am a sensualist for the here and now.” I was eating a slice of lemon tea cake that a friend had made, in a circle of women I loved deeply. See what I mean, I wanted to say.
Elizabeth wondered if I’ve always been this way, or whether something happened to shift my awareness. She wasn’t wrong.
When my daughter was 10-months-old I was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. A lymphoma that reared its head again when I got pregnant with our second daughter.
The hormones were like Miracle-Gro for the cancer and it raged out of control until traditional treatments stopped working and I began to wonder if I should write letters for each year of my kids’ lives. Happy twelfth birthday, my darling. Congrats to the college grad! All my love on your wedding day. With a toddler and a 4-month-old, I was entered into a clinical trial that saved my life. I no longer worry about writing those letters. My kids will know me, not just through photographs, but the actual day to dayness of living.
So now I lean hard into the present. I live in Napa Valley where I am constantly surrounded by beauty. It doesn’t take much to seek it out. I putter around the kitchen, slow cooking beans or pork shoulders in a brown-spotted Le Creuset, Leonard Cohen on the speakers, watching my daughters dig for treasure in the garden beds we just turned over. I smash anchovies and garlic with a little mound of salt until there’s a thick paste that I plop in a ceramic bowl with capers, herbs, shallots and red wine vinegar. I have always shown my love through food, but after so many years of fasting and purging my kitchen of inflammatory cheeses and eating beige food off of gum-colored hospital trays, I am a glutton for pleasure, especially in the kitchen.
As the days grow longer we take family walks after dinner, the girls running ahead through pink-blossomed trees. There are rounds of Uno after bathtime and I love to lie in each of their too-short beds once the lights are out as we whisper-talk about flavors of gum and my favorite toys when I was a kid. My daughters are desperate for an Easy Bake Oven.
My husband is a winemaker and there is a lot of beauty there too. The smell of oak and the fizzy, musky scent of fermenting grapes. It is very sexy watching him dip a glass thief into a barrel and pour a taste of something he’s made into my glass. I don’t drink a lot these days — treatment pushed me into early menopause and I currently value sleep more than alcohol — but I do love a gorgeous wine and the intimacy of it all.
It is not a life that I take for granted. And I never feel guilty spending time on myself too. I love a good face cream and a perfect white buttoned-down. For the past year I’ve sent out a weekly newsletter with all of the things catching my eye, from ribbed pants to artwork to lip balms. It’s a way for me to consolidate the beautiful finds dotting my browser windows. And it’s connective — instead of keeping it all in my head, I can pull photos and create links and throw open the doors to a part of myself. When I first started I didn’t realize how important the sense of community would be to me, but I’ve come to cherish it. It’s such a thrill to engage with women in a supportive, fun way.
As I get further and further away from those sick years, I am slowly unfurling, returning to myself. There’s a sharpening or a focusing that delights me, like life is in technicolor, and I’m enjoying all of it. You might even say, true to Type 7’s, that I’m enthusiastically appreciating the little things.